


Language of Averted Eyes

by dracofuckmalfoy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Bottom Lance (Voltron), Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Oral Sex, Pining Lance (Voltron), Post-Season/Series 07, Romance, Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 07:11:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15903411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracofuckmalfoy/pseuds/dracofuckmalfoy
Summary: Voltron: retold through an in-depth look into the dustiest and most obscure corners of Lance's Keith-ridden mind. Love, war, sexual frustration, and falling off the edge of the world - in which bravery is as much the ending as the beginning, and, against all odds, they unravel in each other's arms.





	Language of Averted Eyes

Lance learned a few things during his time at the Galaxy Garrison. He learned about the application of the laws of physics to the interpretation of astronomical observations. He learned how to operate the controls of the simulator, even though it didn’t prepare him for the gut-clenching reality of hurtling through space in a mechanical slash magical lion in the slightest. In retrospect, it sort of seemed like a punchline to the hilarious cosmic joke that was the trajectory of his life.

He learned that friendship was imperative in distracting you from the suffocating sameness of the concrete walls and communal dormitories. Learned that Hunk Garrett always knew how to lift your spirits with a pat on the shoulder, a reassuring _you alright, man_ , an extra helping of mashed potatoes. He was certain it was a testament to all the mutilated miles they’d come together, the world tearing away all permanence except the solidity they found in moon-fueled whispers and Naruto battles and Dorito dust, in each other.

Learned that a carefully crafted facade of conceit camouflaged every damp realization about yourself that churned and wriggled on the inside. Learned that, if you talked loudly and animatedly enough and punctuated your sentences with self-assured grins, no one bothered to take a closer look at the unhinged parts. 

Learned that the personal additions to his room didn’t make home feel any closer like Veronica had suggested it would, so he tossed them out with the Stouffer’s meals and the last moth-eaten vestiges of his sanity.

He learned that, in real life, there was no such thing as a gritty reboot, a second chance: it was just fucking grainy all the time. The Garrison wasn't all he thought it would be. It was set-out bedtimes and stuffy uniforms, it was muted individuality and an oppressive authority regime, it was "focus, structure and obedience" strewn across the linoleum floors. 

Lance learned that no one adhered to sport film clichés anyway, except perhaps to the values of the soggy egotistical prick with the bowl cut who didn’t get the girl in the end, and the scariest thing of all was that he could see himself becoming that man. 

But, most importantly, he learned that, no matter how many hours you studied, or how dedicated, or how determined you were, or how much perseverance you upheld, you sometimes just didn’t make the cut. You sometimes ended up as a cargo pilot reduced to staring blankly at the rankings on bullet pin boards at 3 A.M. with fury shivering through you: an open vein-line. _1._ _Keith Kogane_ flashing before your eyes: the name a reminder, an ever-present alarm clock that screeches _beep you’re not enough beep you’ll never be enough beep_ , waking you up too early so you spend the rest of your life with bags under your eyes.

And when Keith finally disappeared as if he hadn’t existed as anything but a figment of Lance’s imagination in the first place, Lance learned that Keith’s absence would always leave him feeling brittle-boned and lacking direction, as if Keith was a moody universal constant, a hot-headed principle in the turning of the axis of Lance’s fluctuating being.

Although Keith had dismissed Lance’s every attempt at conversation, although he had only ever regarded Lance with a disinterested scowl, although Lance had eventually clad his admiration and jealousy of Keith in a make-belief rivalry to repudiate the range of emotions he experienced whenever the asshole laughed, Lance needed his presence. It had been grounding in a way that he didn’t want to dwell on.

Perhaps it was because he craved something that lend sustenance to bleached days, even if that manifested itself as an appalling hairstyle and snark and a worrying disposition to anti-establishment.

Perhaps it was because, in some warped and twisted way, Keith motivated him to keep fighting, to keep improving, against all odds.

When Keith vanished without a trace, Lance’s tenuous methods of functioning was jeopardized. He was a broken compass needle, pointing south, and south, and south.

He didn’t know what that said about him as a person. Didn't want to know.

“I hope I don’t need to remind you that the only reason you’re here is that the best pilot in your class had a discipline issue and flunked out,” Iverson sneered, his hands positioned on his hips. Lance shrunk backwards, and clenched his fists at his sides. He wondered where Keith was, what he could’ve possibly done to evoke this kind of reaction, whether something that reckless, that wild, could ever be institutionalized in the first place.

Lance learned that day that Keith Kogane lived a life much too fast to hold on to.

 

**The Pivotal Moment**

Lance’s mom loved poetry. She left her bundles dog-eared and tattered on the end-tables, strewn across the living room floor, lying on the kitchen counter. A collection of creeping mortality and modern decay interspersed with witticisms about what and how to love. It lured Lance in: orange-soft words that permeated his every exhalation.

But the trouble with poets was that they were all liars – whiskey-sipping, tobacco-smoking, dishonest fucks – scribbling down their rose-coloured revelations in order to corrupt naïve young minds like Lance’s. Stanzas composed of deception. Romance didn’t consist of sighs and intertwined fingers, of lingering kisses and dew-dotted windows. In Lance’s experience, it was mainly made of cum-slicked palms and lip gloss and skittish girls with wicked grins.

Nothing ever worked out the way Whitman told you it would, and the open road was gruelling – not enough pit-stops. The world didn’t end like Yeats had predicted, with the loosening of a blood-dimmed tide, with beasts slouching towards Bethlehem. Not a bang. Never a whimper. That would’ve been too dignified.

No, the world ended with a lithe figure sprinting across the desert to rescue Takashi Shirogane. It ended with binoculars digging into your skin, with your stomach in your throat, with Pidge staring at you in disbelief or disappointment, with a pathetic statement like _I’d recognize that mullet anywhere_. It ended in a sterilized chamber that smelled like antiseptic, under harsh fluorescent lighting, in the ungodly hours of the night.

And The End wasn’t an explosion, or rich notes of firelight lulling you to an eternal slumber, or an apathetic deity, like literature argued it would be.

The End wore fingerless gloves, and frowned, bushy eyebrows furrowing as it supported Shiro’s slumping form, and it asked, low and impertinent as anything, “Who are you?”

The question settled somewhere in between Lance’s spine rungs like an itch, something inexorable, something he couldn’t reach. It was disconcerting at best – that you could spend the vast majority of your time so invested in another person, so caught up in their every shift and step and pause, and have them not even acknowledge your existence.

“Uh, the name’s Lance.”

And there was nothing even remotely flowery or wistful or melancholic about _that_.

Poets could go fuck themselves.

 

**Bonding**

Lance continued pressing their rivalry, hammered it into his skull until it ran along every hairline fracture. It beat the alternative, which was forming some sort of amiable relationship with his teammate. Or something mushy and gross like that. But he had already tried that back on Earth, and had no intention of suffering through Keith’s dismissal, his blatant superiority, yet again. It was some sort of coping mechanism, and an unhealthy one at that, Lance supposed, but he refused to overthink it.

His mother had always told him that he chose to see things in a way that made sense to him rather than the way they actually were.

Keith made it so easy, of course, exasperation contorting his features after every insult Lance threw at him. He rose to the challenge, without a sliver of magnanimity, and they were always at each other’s throats – tumbled together in a sticky boy-shaped mass of cursing and smirking and taunting, filleting one another right down to the marrow with their knife-like dynamic. It wasn’t solely Lance who fueled the competitiveness, although he had initiated it.

And so they skidded around each other, prowling, seizing one another up, preparing to pounce. It was dauntless yet cautious, razor-sharp and backwards. The tension in the castle was palpable, like a dense fog that clouded their senses, and it affected Voltron to some extent, but Lance was addicted: to the bared teeth, the white-knuckled grimaces, the snarls that induced scathing internal monologues.

Things were relatively simple and straightforward for a while. He hated Keith, or convinced himself that he did, and visa versa.

But, inevitably, there came a catalyst in the form of a grouchy purple bat called Sendak, and it started the burgeoning horrorshow of _bonding_ , as Keith referred to it, because he was a dim-witted fucker with no social aptitude whatsoever, except that was only partially true.

But said alien managed to nearly send Lance to his untimely demise, and the next thing Lance knew, the world had turned on its sneering head, and Keith was crouched down next to him, and his proximity was concerning, to say the least. Keith’s cheeks were flushed and his breathing noticeably laboured, sweaty bangs obscuring his face – battle-hit and battered.

And if there was a god, he took pleasure in torturing unstable youths with these situations, because Keith extended an arm and assisted Lance in sitting upright. Keith appeared distressed, and Lance briefly considered the possibility that he had literally died, wished that he had, to some extent.

Four words could throw the entire balance of the universe off.

“Lance, are you okay?”

Four words could dig its derisive claws into everything you neatly tucked away in the binding of your ribs, believing it would never see sunlight again, and pull it to the surface.

Lance promptly went through the seven stages of grief.

And the tectonic plates of his life shuddered, and realigned themselves into a patchwork of milestones always and inexplicably centered around Keith Kogane: an irremediable process.

Lance’s surroundings were a bit fuzzy, and corners appeared haze-softened. His mind hyper-focused on the violet flecks surroundings Keith’s dilated pupils, and he felt seasick, on top of the bludgeoning headache threatening to melt his brain.

But he somehow managed to form a coherent sentence, half delirious and fairly certain he had a concussion and that a healing pod was probably advisable.

“We did it.”

 _Crack_ went Lance’s defenses, and the pitiful shards rattled where their hands were still clasped together.

“We are a good team.”

A dusty-warm smile. Lance tried to convert the shape of it to memory.

 

**Middle Ground**

Somewhere in the blur of saving each other’s lives on a daily basis, of metallic tastes on tongues, of gushing wounds and adrenaline-spikes, of fighting shoulder-to-shoulder until the dust cleared and your knees buckled, something between Keith and Lance stuttered and came to a halt in a rickety space of indolent banter and companionship.

They occasionally sparred together when they were too bone-weary to talk, but too restless to sleep. And there was a much needed quiet that ensconced them in the training room: a blanket of something easy-going, weaved from the rhythmic movements of the bots and the rasping of their breaths. They were no longer attempting to tear each other’s innards out at every opportunity. They had actually managed a few civilized conversations that didn’t encompass battle plans. Something like mutual respect, like acceptance, scratched at their interactions.

Lance found that Keith could be as witty as he could be impulsive, as intrepid as he could be temperamental. With careful coaxing and the added assistance of the effects of sleep-deprivation, Keith sometimes let his guard down long enough for Lance to glimpse the natural born leader within: flashes of the boy who attacked first to spare himself the brindle-sick abandonment, because he had discovered too soon that the only real threat could be found in other people.

And Lance would wake up one day and realize with a start that he just _knew_ things about the Red Paladin, without knowing precisely _how_ that came to be, like how Keith took his coffee, or what music he listened to, or what his favourite colour was. He knew that Keith had a few freckles scattered across his shoulderblades, knew that he bit his nails to stumps, knew that he tapped his foot incessantly when aggravated. All frothy, corporeal things that ultimately had nothing to do with who Keith was, except that they  _did_ _._ And it was so strange and yet not, leaving Lance feeling vaguely queasy, but in that peculiar belly-thrill sort of way.

He had always wanted to know Keith - the enigmatic, isolated boy with fire crackling orange-sharp on his molars. Even from a distance, Lance had wanted to be so intricately familiar with the inner-workings of Keith's mind that Keith couldn't efface him if he tried. For reasons unknown, of course, Lance had found himself gravitating towards Keith since the very beginning. Yes, Lance had always wanted to unravel this coiled, steel-coated person, to smooth out his edges and study him like an etymologist with a catalogue of newly-discovered runes. And now he had the chance, the chance to squeeze through the air-tight walls Keith had constructed around himself. 

Lance wouldn’t call them particularly close, but they were sort of tentative friends now, who sporadically had some slip-ups, like this morning, but it was never consequential. They sauntered around in some sort of fragile middleground, and things were alright.  At least, the word “rivals” hadn’t crossed Lance’s mind in a long, long time.

 

**Comfort**

There’s a few times in one’s life when an epiphany slams you square in the chest and your very lungs protest the lead-heavy conviction that now rests on them.

For Lance, it was something along the lines of _you’re literally fucking useless._

He lost it. While watching Pidge programming algorithms or studying superpositioning, or while seeing Hunk extrapolate chemical equations, Lance lost it. While witnessing Keith’s calculated movements in hand-to-hand combat, or while listening to Shiro’s assured commands and counsel, or while admiring Allura’s tenacity and eclectic skillset, or while marvelling at Coran’s bottomless well of knowledge, Lance lost it.

And he was sucked into an ever downward spiral of self-doubt: questioning, clawing, clambering. And somewhere between a breakfast of space-goo and a lunch of deep-fried homesickness, he came to the conclusion that he was a stage prop, an impotent bystander, not bringing anything to the table of their journey but the toothpicks, the afterthoughts.

It was as if, for a second, he dissociated, stepped outside of his life and saw things for how they were. He was the puzzle piece that didn’t fit. The Jenga block on top of the tower.

Lance saw the entire course of his life from an objective point of view, and it was fucking miserable.

Hunk wouldn’t understand, even with all his compassion and empathy. And Lance told him _everything_ , from when he last had a shit to what he thought of Laissez-faire capitalism. But Hunk would pull Lance into a bear-hug, or list Lance’s qualities on his fingers, like that fixed anything at all. “Funny, free-spirited, friendly” – as if those traits contributed anything to their mission of saving the galaxies. Pidge wouldn’t understand, even with her analytical approaches and whirring mind. Neither would Shiro, or Allura, or Coran.

And that was how he ended up entering Keith’s room, feeling like it was a last resort, a last reach for validation, a grasp for _something_ to cauterize the claw-marks, the slashes of his deprecation. And he never pinpointed _why_ he thought Keith of all people could do that for him, _would_ do it, but he did.

Keith _did_ understand, somehow, and steadied Lance on his wobbly legs.

“Hey, man. I just wanted to talk to you, because...well...I’ve been worried about something,” Lance started. He felt jumpy, like something was gnawing on the inside of his stomach, and forced himself not to surrender to his nail-biting tick.

“Must really be bothering you if you’re coming to talk to me.” That reaction crawled into Lance’s subconscious, to be examined thoroughly, chewed and spat out later. _Was it attesting to Keith’s own esteem issues?_

Keith had his arms folded, a defensive stance, like he was prepared to ward off an assault. Lance didn’t blame him.

“Well, you’re the leader now. Right?” Lance said, trying his best to hold Keith’s gaze. 

“I guess.”

The situation felt off-kilter, charged with everything they had never said and most likely never would.

Lance swallowed thickly. “I’ve been doing some math. With Shiro back, that makes six paladins. But there are only five lions. And, if I’m right, that’s one paladin too many.”

The addition and subtraction of all his sloughy concerns: narrowed down to a few rambled sentences in the death of evening, and the penetrating stare of a stone-hewn boy.

“Solid math.”

Lance wanted to grab Keith by the shoulders and shake him. “Look. When Shiro takes over the black lion, you’re going to want your red lion back. If I get a lion, that means I’ll have to take Blue from Allura. And she’s progressing a lot faster than any of us did. She might even be able to unlock powers we don’t know of.” _What’s my worth?_

“That’s true,” Keith conceded, looking thoughtful, a crease in his brow.

He was both scorched and glimmering in the terror of being bombarded out of shelter, and the tides came roaring in.

Lance sighed. “So maybe the best thing I can do for the team is... step aside.”

And there it was. Articulated. A festering abrasion. Out in the open like a carcass to be torn to shreds by the carrion crows. Ridicule or comprehension. Now or never. They were dangling off the edge of an equivocal climax, fighting for purchase in the gravel.

And Keith hauled them to safety.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

True salvation strayed from the Biblical prophecies, from the dogmatic stigmata of saints. It wasn't a Second Coming. It didn't come with a cacophony of trumpets. Nothing ostentatious. It came in the uncluttered haven of Keith’s room, it came softly and assertive, it came as lapping waves, and Lance wanted to stitch designs in the water.

“Stop worrying about who flies what and just focus on your missions. Things will work themselves out.”

With all things wispy and ineffable resting on the tip of Lance’s tongue, he started to slink towards the exit, and, later, he’d beat himself up over it. Because Lance wanted to tell Keith how grateful he was for the subtle reassurance. Wanted to tell him that he was important to Lance, that he mattered. Wanted to tell Keith that Lance would also be there for _him_ , through thick-and-thin, and time-and-time again.

Blue and Red, since time immemorial.

Lance _wanted_ to tell Keith, honestly, he did.

Alas, he was a bayard-wielding, alien-fighting coward, corrupted by a sissy heart. He settled for an insipid “okay”, a meek and bodiless thing that tasted foul in his mouth. _No, that’s not it._  

“And, Lance, leave the math to Pidge.”

If only things were that simple.

 

**Loneliness**

Nostalgia was a potent anesthetic. Lance couldn’t shake the feeling that the world had skipped forward like a scratched record into something distorted, and he couldn’t find the exact note where it had left him behind.

He missed Keith, and their early objectives (or misadventures, depending on who you asked) as a duo, as a team. Perhaps he was sentimental. Perhaps he was too sensitive.

They were fighting a war, _for fuck’s sake_ , and all Lance could think about was stupid Keith and his stupid knife-obsession and his stupid cropped jacket and his stupid mullet, only none of it was actually stupid except maybe Lance.

He spent hours meandering aimlessly through the corridors of the castle, when he wasn’t blowing things up, and kept expecting to spot a mop of shaggy black hair in his peripheral, or hear the unmistakable cat-in-a-blender onomatopoeia of hard rock ballads ricocheting off the walls. Of course, Keith, _the imperious asshole_ , was affiliated with the Blade of Marmora now, having resigned as team leader, and there was only slate-grey silence.

Lance was left prickly and jagged and ill-proportionate, tearing at the ends of his hair and rubbing at his eyes until they stung with everything left unsaid. And maybe he had cried himself to sleep at least twice, or had rammed his fist into a wall, and, _yes_ , it was fucking poignant and embarrassing and Lance wanted to shrink into a washed-out corner of the world.  

Something felt amiss, like he had come home only to find all the furniture had been rearranged.

Lance didn’t even try to deny that this chronic infatuation was a result of having grown closer to Keith in the last couple of months. He had started to notice how they pulled each other along like an undertow, how they hanged hand-in-hand in mutual ritualistic joy.

_Lance would tug, and Keith would flow. Keith would burn, and Lance would extinguish. Lance would crumble, and Keith would mold. They operated as a cohesive unit, co-leading, always back-to-back, swinging like extensions of one another. Their combined belligerence a violet impetus._

_For minutes at a time, they’d forget about the weight of the entire observable universe that rested on their shoulders._

_Two gangly-limbed boys, almost men, lazing around – talking about nothing and everything in that sea-green summer way, like one does when you’re eighteen and the whole world is yours to lose._

_Only it couldn’t ever be like that for long, because they had planets to liberate and empires to fuck over. But it provided a semblance of safety and security while it lasted._

_Keith sometimes mumbled something about orphanages and coarse abandonment, and Lance coughed up confessions of atom-deep complexes. Then the topics would drift to greasy food and movie marathons and all thoughts versatile and feather-light._

_And sometimes they fell asleep on a couch or in a musty alcove after one of these conversations, and accidentally woke up tangled around one another with elbows digging into hip bones and drool coating shoulders. And it was in times like these, when Keith was all pliant and malleable in his arms, and melted into a feline stretch with a soft-spoken “hey there”, that Lance, somewhat flustered, suddenly couldn’t imagine himself in any reality that didn’t have Keith Kogane strutting around in it._

_He didn’t know how he had to pick up his marbles and grow up without Keith’s pale angles and gut-deep inferno pressed into his side like ballast, like affirmation. He couldn’t, and it suggested something about how every inch of him galvanized and sparked whenever Keith wrinkled his nose or talked excitedly about hippos._

Just when things had started to seem less bleak, and Lance felt like he and Keith were tipping towards something, like they somehow always had been, Keith packed up his bags and left without so much as a “I’ll come back”.

_I’ll come back for you._

Like none of it had ever meant anything at all.

Like Lance had never meant anything at all.

Of course, Lance understood _why_ Keith had left. Keith needed to find himself, he needed to know who he was, and where he belonged in all of this: the grander fucked-up scheme of contingency.

And, above all else, Lance hoped Keith found what he was looking for.

Because the Blade offered answers like Keith had offered Lance solace.

 

**Debauched**

There was no doubt about it. Lance wanted to nail Princess Allura like a loose floorboard or buy her an obscene amount of peonies.

She was smart, and breathtakingly beautiful. Independent, vivacious, talented and benevolent. He could go on for a while. She saw the light in others when there appeared to be an absence of it, she was fiercely loyal and she knew how to stand her ground. Lance admired her. Lance could even see himself falling in love with her.

But there were three major problems which prevented _that_ first-rate p.o.a. from happening.

One which Lance had dubbed _#1 The Walking L’Oréal Commercial,_ and then the second but way more substantial and totally foreseeable #2 _Lance’s Raging Incompetence And Unfaltering 7th Wheeling_ , and lastly, but surely not the least, _#3 The Pernicious Effects of Lance’s Very Gay Thoughts About Keith Kogane._

To elaborate: The first and already indomitable obstacle was Lotor and his absurdly silky locks – the current long-legged object of Allura’s affection. The man was a prince, for Christ’s sake, and the lean-muscled paragon of charisma and finesse, unlike Lance, who fumbled through his own ministrations: spewing hackneyed pick-up lines to win people over and often failing sordidly. Lance couldn’t even compete, hence _#2_ on the list of reasons why he sort of sucked and would never get to bang Allura into the next dimension. The road to Hell was paved with his unambiguous inadequacy, and then some.

Lotor had Allura wrapped around his little finger, like she was a piece of chewed-up imperial Altean gum. She grovelled at his feet, and Lance had no idea how she didn’t see straight through him - the opulent, narcissistic fucker. And he had no way of getting these concerns through to Allura. Lotor was using them, Lance knew it. And fucking Keith wasn’t there to listen to his _Issues_ with a capital “i” regarding bristly hormones and fuckable princesses fucking princes and Lance was having his fifth existential crisis of the day.

Which led him to the final and most daunting hurdle, #3, the ubiquitous roadblock that he just couldn’t get around: yes, Lance was a high-strung, Keith-plagued, blubbering, bisexual disaster.

The first time Lance had realized that he entertained less-than-straight thoughts about Keith, they had been sprawled on the floor of the training room, a few months before Keith left to join the Blade of Marmora. They had been lying so close to one another that Lance only had to slightly relax his fingers and they would touch Keith’s. Keith’s chest had been heaving from exertion, and Lance couldn’t help but notice how his V-neck strained across his chest. Sweat had been running down his temples in sinuous rivulets and his cheeks were flushed, strands of hair sticking to his forehead and curling in the nape of his neck. And then, for some unfathomable reason, Keith had decided to elicit Lance’s first semi-heartattack by turning his head to the side and giving Lance the laziest, softest grin, and Lance’s spleen had lurched sharply to the left and, oh, _oh_ , he had wanted to have Keith’s dick in his mouth. Wanted to straddle his thighs and run his hands across his back and sink his teeth into the juncture between his neck and shoulder. Wanted to tug on Keith's hair and watch himself disappear between pink, parted lips. Wanted to slot their bodies together right there and then. Wanted to help Keith shimmy out of those outrageously tight skinny jeans that made Lance's eyes bulge in their sockets. And that had been that. Nothing dramatic. He realized it out of nowhere. All at once. Because nothing ever happened slowly and gradually when Keith was involved. It sort of explained his age-old obsession with Keith: the thing was rooted in sexual frustration. And perhaps Lance had snuck off to his room after this revelation to jerk off and contemplate his terrible life choices.

It wasn’t like Keith had been Lance’s sexual awakening or anything cheesy like that. In fact, Lance had mourned his heterosexuality quite thoroughly when he saw Shiro working out for the first time back at the Garrison. The man could probably bench-press Lance’s body weight and, to be honest, it was bloody tantalizing.

Anyway, if you could sift through the haphazard bookshelf of Lance’s mind, you’d discover a musty-smelling volume stuffed in between _The Encyclopedia Of Memes_ and the classic _Fuck You, Commander Iverson_. Its spine was creased with the weight of all the incriminating evidence related to one indignant paladin Lance sometimes wanted to throttle but mostly wanted to pin against a wall. And if you were to turn its rumpled pages, you'd find expert analysis on the state of Keith's hair: how it stuck up at impossible angles when he woke up contrasted with how it floofed mightily in humidity, and how those facts correlated to the twinging of Lance's innards. Graphic descriptions of all Keith's smiles: which ones crinkled his eyes, which ones were full of teeth, which ones were shy and reserved, which ones Lance had put there. Paragraphs about Keith's many different laughs: uncontained, quiet, surprised, dignified and undignified. A few red hearts, tucked away near the binding. 

His little, admittedly _not-so-little_ , crush on Keith was a problem, because the fucker was nowhere to be seen and would obviously never reciprocate these balmy, gooey feelings in a billion years (Lance was convinced Keith didn't have normal human emotions, perhaps a by-product of his Galra heritage). So Lance dove head-first into another novel - this one a paperback - titled  _Pretty White-Haired_   _Altean Babe_ and kept rereading it even though he found it somewhat mundane and lacking in plot twists. 

It worked, for a while. 

But then Keith came back: two years older and buffer and more confident.

And, after Keith's return, every time Lance tried to have a wank, boobs flattened out and hips narrowed and voices deepened and thighs became sinewy and muscular.

And Lance thought  _fuck_.

 

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fu -_  

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Next chapter will deal with season 7! Tell me what you think. This is my first fic, by the way. Find me on Tumblr as hazardousuniverse.


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